I am the Founder & CEO of Ideasicle, a virtual marketing-ideas company pioneering the "Expert Sourcing" model. Prior to founding Ideasicle, I worked at some of the most creative advertising agencies in the world, including Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Mullen and Arnold Worldwide. It was at these agencies that my passion for ideas (having them and witnessing their birth from others) was inspired and cultivated. It's also where I found my small pool of "Experts" for Ideasicle. I am a guest lecturer at Boston University, an agency pitch consultant on the side, and speak at marketing conferences around the country about the changing marketing landscape in the context of creativity and idea generation.

Beck 'Produces' A Genius Innovation That Appeals To The User-Generated Generation

There are times when I see an idea that is so good, so fresh, so amazing that I:

Become immediately proud to be human.

Stand up to let the energy of the idea fill my body.

Tell everyone I know about it.

Now is one of those times.

Beck (Beck Hansen) is famous for his underground, anti-folk, alternative, dreamy-yet-hook-driven music. His first biggie was “Loser” way back in 1994. But his ability to understand and reach his audience just went cosmic. He released a new album, but it’s not a record or a CD or a series of MP3 files. Something way better.

“In the wake of Modern Guilt and The Information, Beck’s latest album comes in an almost-forgotten form—twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded.”

Sheet music. Nothing but sheet music.

Think about the implications of that idea in this modern age of digital information, content creation, sharing, and social communities.

It’s More Than An Album. It’s An Invitation.

Beck fans the world over will be drawn to the “invitation” this sheet music presents. Go ahead, grab your guitar, find a friend who plays keys, get your brother to play drums, and then turn GarageBand on and record these Beck songs. And record them the way you want to record them. Be inspired by the imagery in the packaging, be inspired by the compositions, but generate your own takes. The idea of an unproduced album is beautiful for this reason alone, and is likely the primary driver. But I’m just getting started.

This Content Will Not Stand Still.

The music that Beck fans create will not rest on their hard drives gathering pixel dust. Because it’s Beck doing the inviting, the musicians who accept his invitation will be supremely motivated to share their interpretations of Beck’s twenty songs. We will see Facebook albums, YouTube videos, web sites Tweeted. Anyone who takes a stab at producing these songs will pick up where Beck left off and promote the album for free. These songs will be everywhere. Touring bands may find new life if they can bill their act as “THE” interpretation of Beck’s album. It’s endless.

This Content Will Be Hungrily Consumed.

There will be a steep “curiosity incline” inherent with the lack of musical production. People will want to hear this album. As such, there’s a ready-made audience waiting anxiously for anyone (anyone at all), to post MP3s of these songs. Once a fan finally hears the album for the first time, even if it’s by “Jimmy’s Eight-year-old Band,” then the fun will shift to hearing the many, many different interpretations of those songs. With no official recording from Beck, there will be no wrong answers. I am truly fascinated and giddy with anticipation to watch all of this unfold.

Here’s the most brilliant part of the idea, and the part that appeals to the marketer in me. You can’t just download this album, you have to buy it. It’s not digital, it’s paper. Beck has successfully found a loophole in our digital addictions. A loophole that will find musicians and non-musicians alike wanting to purchase such a novelty, either to play the music privately, publicly, or simply to follow along while listening to the world bring the music to life. Sure, someone will probably scan the sheet music into pdfs and send them around, but my gut tells me that, since Beck isn’t recording this music himself, the only way for Beck fans to truly experience Beck within this medium is to buy the full-color, beautifully designed package in a store.

Who Won’t Go To The Next Beck Concert?

The other brilliant thing this idea does for Beck, the musician, is create wild anticipation for his next concert. I’m assuming he’ll have one, and that he’ll actually perform some of these songs. If I were him, I’d wait at least a year, though. Let the fans cycle through the recording, the user-generating, the social sharing, the commentary, the everything, first. Let the anticipation build (for free, I might add). Then come out with the concert. Maybe even bring on stage some of Beck’s favorite online performers of his work to play their interpretations. Or play his favorite fan-generated YouTube clips during the concert with some Beck commentary to go with it. The possibilities are ruthlessly endless. But I know I would go to that show, and I’m not a huge Beck fan.

In fact, I hope this idea generates an entirely new medium for other artists to copy. I could see aging rock stars, who struggle to perform the way they did in the ’60s but are still great song writers, for instance, issuing this kind of sheet-music album to keep the flame alive. I could see music teachers in high schools and colleges using this medium as a teaching platform for students.

It’s a modern idea that appeals to the user-generated generation. It made me proud to be human, it made me stand right up, and it made me want to share it with you right now.

I can’t wait to hear someone – anyone – post their interpretations of this fantastic new Beck album.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

“You can’t just download this album, you have to buy it.” – Pretty sure the .pdf format is smaller and easier to share than .mp3, probably well-positioned to become the most pirated ‘album’ of all time.

You may be right, Ben. But I gotta think the extra step of having to find a copier will inhibit some percentage of piracy (vs the simplicity of copying mp3 files). Plus, who would want the PDF? I mean, really, if you’re into it, you’ll buy the package (I think). But we will see.

I appreciate your faith in humanity, but it theoretically takes only one person to .pdf that thing and start the chain of unlicensed reproduction. While I do agree that Beck fans are probably a little more loyal than your average fans, history has proven that where people’s wallets are concerned, morality gets tossed to the wind. Even the most avid music zealots have pirated .mp3s (less so in the Padora/Spotify era), why would this be any different? It’s like saying nobody would ever pirate a cd because it takes extra effort to import tracks. It would take me less than five minutes to scan Beck’s entire album. And I digress, it only takes one person with a scanner to digitize. The day it’s released it will be available for free. That’s a guarantee.

There is a scanner in my office where, if I were so inclined, I could put the reams of paper into a loading tray, hit a button, and within a few minutes, I have a perfect digital copy with OCR capabilities, properly named and ready to be uploaded to the internet. One button. I’m not though. Inclined, that is.

I answered this same challenge in another comment, so dig that up for details. But suffice it so say, I agree the pirating thing isn’t the most compelling part of my argument. But even shaving 3-4% off the propensity to pirate an album saves someone like Beck big bucks.

I also think he’ll make less money with this format. Nothing prevents him though to sell his version of the album one year later. Also, that begs the question, how much money is he doing anyway with album sales? Recording companies are hungry for money. I have the impression many artists make their money with tours, depending on their contract for their album sales.

One last comment, and the most interesting (maybe someone else said it in the comments): selling music sheet is not innovation. It’s actually getting back to the source. This was how music was sold in late 19th century! Now would we say that our old folks were even more inclined on user-generated content? :)

I am sorry to say, but that is just incredibly naive to think people won’t be downloading this as much as MP3′s. For people who actually do want this, it will be easier to access than mp3′s, I promise you. You must be completely out of touch with reality to not realize this.

Also, the fact that you are claiming this “market strategy” to be genius is also outrageous. By releasing something that only appeals to a small percentage of your fan base is a huge step backwards. For instance, how many people that bought Modern Guilt do yo think actually read sheet music. I would venture to guess less that 10%. Just for comparison sake, lets say my estimation is way off and it ends up being 50%. You are still limiting your sales by at least 50%. And this doesn’t account for the people, like myself, that will be downloading the PDF files. It’s an interesting concept, but it’s foolish to think that this will A: Appeal to masses and B: Generate a larger profit than an actual album

Ted, love the passion. You may be right about the piracy thing. We’ll see. But, again, I believe people who are into this idea (and Beck) will want their own “produced” copy of the materials or it won’t feel real to them. I could be wrong.

To your second point, you are making the assumption that sales is the only goal of this idea. There could be another bigger objective for Beck: relevance, awareness, teasing a tour, etc. Beck doesn’t necessarily get automatic airplay on the airwaves anymore – he’s not really classic rock yet, but also not purely progressive (nor anywhere near a Kiss 108 play). So this idea may not be about sales at all. It might be about getting this naive, out of touch, foolish, Contributor to Forbes to write about it!

I think he’s doing the exact opposite of Def Leppard and taking RadioHead’s attitude of basically giving up on making money on recorded music and just giving it away. Make money off concerts and keep your fans interested. He takes it a step further by letting the fans create the music turning it into crowd sourced performance art for music in the Internet age. He’s not trying to win over Bieber fans. The dedicated fans who played and shared it show up live to see Beck’s version and cut out the “record release” altogether. It would be quite an amazing feeling to hear for the first time a song you know and played and played. He’s reframed the very notion of copying and copyright in the digital age with mere paper. Brilliant in its simplicity.

It’s a totally creative and intriguing idea, but it’s only functional because he’s a pre-internet artist, someone who made it big during the old media era. It’s also a one-off gimmick (or maybe a few like this) as far as the commercialism goes.

The truth is: I LOVE the idea in terms of musical creativity. The problem with recordings is that they necessarily include every nuance, leaving nothing unspecified. Sheet music is wonderful for specifying some things and leaving others unset.

As far as the analog-vs-digital thing goes, it’s about on par with someone releasing a record today that is on vinyl only (well, it would be like that if everyone out there still had a working record player).

Truth is, the main reason this is interesting is because it actually celebrates the real trend in music today: participation. The most relevant thing to the political discussion about intellectual property is the acknowledgement and respect for participation.

Thank you Aaron, for finally calling out the importance of PARTICIPATION in the context of the ongoing music intellectual property (IP) discussion.

This insight needs to be repeated over and over and over until audiences and corporations “get” the fact music is a participatory activity, and could benefit from being treated as such in the marketplace.

Nothing could stop sampling in music, no matter how hard they tried, and now we view it as an essential part of some of the biggest hits of our time…

I’m glad to see a highly visible artist like Beck take this idea into the commercial domain, and hopefully it will start a lot of interesting conversations, as well as great musical collaborations.

‎’Genius Innovation’ . . . really?! More like, “I am Beck, I am incredibly famous, (not to mention have little to lose financially) and now as my next stroke of ‘brilliance’, I will now invent the “genius innovation” of (in quotes of course) “musical notation”. It will be SO innovative that even the discerning editors at forbes.com will be fooled.” Can I get a slow, cynical clap please?

If providing the musical notation for a song or composition is considered ‘genius’, then the editors at forbes.com, and Beck for that matter, have a lot to learn, and to use the argument of how it might appeal to the ‘user-generated generation’ is silly and ridiculous (yep, both). Please, this is BECK we’re talking about.

Here, have some more “genius”: http://www.amazon.com/Britney-Spears—-In-Zone/dp/0757920101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344570340&sr=8-1&keywords=britney+spears+sheet+music

Thanks for your comment,Ryan. But I think you completely missed my point. The innovation is obviously not the sheet music itself. It’s the fact that a recording artist like Beck would NOT record his album but invite the world to record it themselves (using the sheet music provided). The genius is in Beck’s sensitivity to the modern digital age and finding a novel way to light a viral fire.